Ewan McGregor and travel mate Charley Boorman hit the road again for another motorcycle adventure for Long Way Home. The Apple TV+ docuseries mark the next leg of their 20-year odyssey that started with Long Way Round, which took the two on a 19,000-mile journey across 12 countries. It’s there they immersed themselves in diverse cultures from London through Europe and Asia to New York.
From there, the duo’s globe-trotting in 2007 took them more than 15,000 miles from John o’ Groats in Scotland to Cape Town, South Africa through 18 countries with Long Way Down. Three years later they reunited for Long Way Up, logging 13,000 miles from Ushuaia in Argentina through 13 countries up to Los Angeles while also exploring the scenic South and Central America.
Here five years later McGregor and Boorman, who first struck up a friendship while working on The Serpent’s Kiss in 1997, have set their eyes on familiar places. They generated 7,600 miles across 17 countries over nine weeks on vintage 50-year-old choppers. Among the locales were McGregor’s home in the highlands of Scotland and Boorman’s English origins.
We sat down with the two to preview the road ahead.
Ewan McGregor and travel mate Charley Boorman (Apple TV+)
What was the locale that surprised you the most?
Ewan McGregor: Svalbard was the most incredible place in terms of its remoteness. Svalbard is an island right up in the very north in the Arctic Circle. We’d ridden all the way up to the north of Norway and always planned to leave our bikes in this town called Tromsø and fly to Svalbard to have a three, four-day mini adventure in the middle of a bigger adventure. That place was extraordinary. I don’t know how many people work there. Not many in the grand scheme of things. We were lucky to be there. There is a great deal of nature there, polar bears, amazing sea life. We saw sea lions and glaciers. It’s an amazing place to visit. That’s not to say a lot of other places weren’t. Norway was an amazing country to visit. Finland too. Sweden and the Eastern European countries like Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Those three were cool too. Poland, amazing.
Ewan McGregor and travel mate Charley Boorman (Apple TV+)
You’ve faced a number of challenges on your journey from weather to even taking a spill on your motorcycle, Ewan. Maybe your life flashes before your eyes at that moment. What do you remember about that?
Charley Boorman: Well, you know crashing is overrated. It is part of the whole thing. There were much fewer crashes this time around.
Ewan: Only one. Yeah it was me.
Charley: Yeah and it was Ewan. One thing, when you’re traveling with a buddy and you’re on these trips you start to rely on each other. It’s a bit like a marriage type thing, which we’ve had four of them together. You kind of rely on each other. When you watch someone else having a little drop of the bike, you panic. You think, “Oh my God.” Everything flashes through your mind. Then you drop off the bike, and you see Ewan. You start to think if he is going to be okay. Then you realize he is okay. There is the relief. That is from my side, but you were the one that had happen.
Ewan: It was so embarrassing, mainly, to have that crash. I think the crashes have gone less and less through the trips. The Africa trip we were crashing all the time.
Charley: We were really, all the time.
Ewan: Sudan I remember coming off really heavy hitting some sand I didn’t see and landing with such a clatter. It was the only time on one of these trips I thought, “What am I doing? Why am I hitting my bones so hard?” I was feeling every bone in my body shatter. This was one little slip.
What did you take from this latest adventure? How would you say these trips have bonded you further over the last 20 years?
Ewan: All I can say is I don’t have a relationship with anyone else like I do with Charley because we’ve ridden so many miles riding through our beautiful world of ours. It has forged a very unique and special friendship for me.
Charley: A journalist told us that if we were to add them and total the time all up, we’d be riding together for over a year. Within that time, we still find it awe-inspiring to travel.
Any other places you want to go next?
Ewan: For the future, you’ll just have to wait and see.
Long Way Home premiere, May 9, Apple TV+
